


Unthinkable

by Lindentreeisle (Captainblue)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-13
Updated: 2011-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainblue/pseuds/Lindentreeisle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Promptfic: Sherlock working in a Japanese host club.  This got fairly dark.</p><p>"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for entire story: sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking. Very little on-screen, but the story revolves around these topics.
> 
> Special thanks to: emungere, lady_ganesh and akasha_lilian for betaing.

Long-distance air travel with Sherlock Holmes, even in first class- which of course Sherlock insisted upon- was everything John had imagined and worse. Eleven hours. Eleven sodding hours of frenzied leg-jiggling, loud deductions on the sex lives of their fellow passengers, recounting of noted air disasters (historical and recent), and whining, whining, whining about how impossibly boring the trip was. ("I thought you'd traveled to Asia before!" John snapped at one point, patience shattered. "Of course," Sherlock said. "But last time I had clonazepam. I assumed you would prefer that we travel free of re-purposed pharmaceuticals.")

It wasn’t even two days since John had come home to find Sherlock offering tea to a civil servant named Sir Ellery Winston and agreeing to find his missing son. Nicholas Winston had been living and working in Japan until three months ago, when his calls and letters home had suddenly stopped. The Tokyo police were getting nowhere and in fact were no longer cooperating with the UK’s embassy at all. Somehow John found himself chivvied into going along, courtesy of a generous expense stipend from Sir Ellery. That was rather dishonest of Sherlock, John thought, but at least he’d agreed to help; even if John was pretty sure he only took the case because Mycroft had warned that the diplomatic climate was dangerous at present and asked Sherlock not to get involved.

By the time John and Sherlock’s plane landed, they’d been traveling all day and it was 9 pm back home, but of course it was 6 am in Tokyo. The airport was a blurry, bright, shrieking nightmare and John was happy to let Sherlock steer him confidently through the crowds, to the baggage claim, to the cab. They stopped briefly to rent Japanese SIM cards for their mobiles, because Sherlock considered mobile phone service on par with oxygen in terms of necessity, then proceeded to the hotel. Once there, John passed out face down on one of the double beds, not knowing or caring what Sherlock planned to do next.

"Gnuh," was John's response when Sherlock finally shook him awake. He still felt like hell, and now the seam from the pillowcase was imprinted all up the left side of his face.

"Get up, you've slept enough," Sherlock said. "It's four o'clock. We can stop for dinner on our way to the police station, if you like."

John slowly got up and looked for his suitcases, which turned out to be lying on the top shelf of the closet. Before John could become annoyed about his things being out of his reach he noticed that his clothes were neatly hanging next to Sherlock's. His flatmate lay back on his own (unmussed) bed and fiddled with his mobile while John used the bathroom and changed into fresh clothes. There was a Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel, but John protested when Sherlock forced a large cup of coffee on him. "The nap was bad enough, I'm never going to sleep tonight as it is."

"You don't want to sleep," Sherlock said firmly, shoving the cup against John's chest so he had to grab it or be scalded. "Most of our work here is going to be done at night, when the clubs are busiest. If you _must_ sleep, it would be better for you to become temporarily nocturnal."

"That's only marginally less unhealthy than your sleep schedule," John muttered, but he took the coffee. “Wait, what clubs?”

“The clubs in Roppongi, where Nicholas Winston likely worked. His father told us he was teaching English to schoolchildren and waiting tables, because that’s what Nicholas told him. But Nicholas came to Japan on a tourist visa, which does not permit employment. He was working illegally but making a good deal of money, which suggests that he was working in a host club or something more directly related to the sex trade.” John blinked. Maybe that was why John had found a small black book entitled Japanese-English Guide to Sex, Kink and Naughtiness tucked into his carry-on. It had got him some _very_ odd looks in the security line.

Instead of hailing a cab, Sherlock dragged him across the street to a tiny restaurant where he ordered for John in careful Japanese. The counterman served John a large bowl of what looked like Pot Noodle but turned out, once John got past the visual weirdness of the random meats and vegetables piled on top, to be ridiculously delicious. Sherlock waved off any suggestions that he himself eat and sipped his coffee while John fumbled with chopsticks and a flat-bottomed spoon.

When John had finished, _then_ Sherlock found them a cab. "Where are we going?" John asked, because he'd listened to Sherlock tell the cabbie but he still had no idea.

"We're going to see Saburo Hayashi, the man in charge of investigating Nicholas Winston's disappearance. He speaks English, according to Sir Ellery, so you should be able to follow the conversation. He will be more honest about the disappearance and Winston’s background because he has no personal attachment and feels no need to be delicate." Sherlock was gazing out the window, watching the city flash by.

"Oh," John said. His brain was still not quite awake.

Sherlock seemed to be feeling effusive, because he just kept going. "Hayashi is a _keibu_ , the local equivalent of the Yard's detective inspector. This is a necessary first stop, but I don't expect it to take very long or be very productive."

"Why not?" John asked. "Didn't Sir Ellery send us here to work with the police?"

"Oh Lord no," Sherlock said. "He sent us here to find his son. The police investigation has stalled, and judging from the treatment which Sir Ellery has been receiving of late, there is little desire to jump-start it. It won't be a serious hindrance; this is the sort of investigation where it doesn't help to be known as a detective. No one in any official capacity admits it, but most of the sex work in Roppongi is done by foreigners working illegally on tourist visas. Someone afraid of being deported is not going to talk to the police."

Sherlock was right about the police, as he was about most things. From the moment they walked into the station, everything felt different, and it wasn't just the fact that they were in a foreign country. John remembered his first crime scene with Sherlock, when everyone save Lestrade made it clear that Sherlock was unwelcome and disliked; there had still been a sort of grudging respect though, at the bottom. They disliked Sherlock because they knew who he was and thought he was a prat, not because they really didn't want his help. At Roppongi's main police station, the constables didn't know who Sherlock was and didn't care. He and John were intruders, and worse than useless; they were a waste of time.

What was kind of amazing to John was that he got this message loud and clear even though nobody called Sherlock a freak or ordered him to get out. Everyone was exceptionally polite to a fault. Hayashi offered them coffee in his office, and smiled a lot and called Sherlock "Homes-san" (skipping the l-sound entirely) and John wasn't quite sure how every word and gesture seemed to say _get out and stay out._ Sherlock himself was rather shockingly circumspect. He didn't use the word ‘idiot’ even once, and he spoke to Hayashi with polite deference and even bowed to him slightly when they were introduced by a more junior constable. John suspected that this was merely self-preservation, since Sherlock didn't have the connections that he needed to tweak the nose of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and get away with it. With all the subtext to watch, John couldn't call the half hour they spent there boring, but it certainly couldn't be called productive, either.

"That was useless," John said as they left the station.

Sherlock was unperturbed. "As I said, a necessary first stop. Now we can actually get to work."

"No crime scene to speak of,” John said. “So where do we begin?”

"I want to see Roppongi," Sherlock said. "See it properly, from the inside. And then we'll want to visit Avec Amour, the club where Nicholas worked. That was probably the only useful piece of information Hayashi gave us. Those letters he sent his father naturally gave very few specifics on his lifestyle, since he was trying to hide it and lying about his activities. The one clue they've given us is the name Aaron Vass- the only friend Nicholas mentioned by name. Most hiring in the clubs is based on word of mouth, and I suspect Vass is the person who connected Nicholas to his most recent employer." He stopped a cab and yanked the door open.

"So- to Roppongi then?" John settled into the back next to Sherlock.

"No, back to the hotel first. I need to change clothes."

Sherlock had for some reason insisted on packing three large suitcases full of clothing for this trip. He had let John get away with one, but much to John’s disgust insisted on a range of outfits for varying occasions; his usual style was more a change of shirt and a couple pairs of pants tucked in his carryon.

John had been watching Sherlock paw through the closet and mutter distractedly about fabrics for ten minutes before he realized that Sherlock had every intention of going out alone. John immediately put his foot down.

"You don't want to come," Sherlock said flatly. "I'm going to have to take a role." Sherlock selected a pair of trousers, kicked off his shoes, and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Why would that make me want to not come?" John asked the bathroom door. "I like watching you act. And I didn't come all the way to Japan to watch telly in a hotel room." He did enjoy seeing Sherlock put on another persona like a cloak, _becoming_ someone else so entirely that it was sometimes a shock to get Sherlock back at the end of the performance. He could have had a career in theater or film if he had wanted it, and the scary thing was that he had never even had an acting lesson, according to Mycroft.

"I have to start infiltrating these clubs, but not as a detective," Sherlock called back. "And that means posing as a host enjoying a night off. Charming. Witty. Attractive. The sort of man that people feel comfortable talking to."

"Oh," John said. That meant teasing and flirting with everything on two legs, most likely, while John lurked uncomfortably in the background. Probably still better than telly, but not the most enjoyable night out John could imagine.

The door opened. He looked up from studying his fingernails to see that Sherlock was standing in the doorway dressed in a pair of extremely tight black trousers and no shirt, studying his face curiously. "I can't understand why it bothers you so much," he said.

 _Because it makes you seem inhuman_ , John didn't say. "It just does," he replied instead.

"You're not a shy man; you'll flirt with someone in front of me," Sherlock continued, as if John hadn't spoken. "You don't show any discomfort when you observe strangers or acquaintances on the pull. It must be something particular to me, but I know it isn't discomfort caused by physical attraction, because you aren't interested in me sexually- I've checked,"

"How have you- no," John backpedaled immediately. "Don't tell me, I don't actually want to know." Sherlock just stared expectantly. "If you must know, it's because you never _mean_ it," John finally said. "It's like when you flattered Molly so she’d give you those severed fingers, or when you gave Sir Ellery that creepy look-at-me-being-normal smile back in the flat. I know you're just pretending to care about them. It's...unkind."

"It's manipulative," Sherlock said. "Not necessarily unkind." He walked back across to the closet and selected a silk button-down, removing it from the hangar.

 _It_ is, _the way you do it._ "It's so calculated. I've never seen you actually, really flirt with someone."

"As I told you when we first met: not really my area," Sherlock said, and shrugged into the shirt he was holding. He tapped a finger against his lower lip for a moment. "John, do you know what a host or hostess club actually is?"

"Uh- some kind of pickup bar?" John guessed. Whorehouse was a more likely possibility, but he wasn't saying that to Sherlock. Sherlock knew what he wasn't saying, apparently, because he shot John an amused look. "Fine. Strip club, then."

"Wrong. Entirely wrong," Sherlock said, starting to button up his shirt. "Certainly some of the seedier places turn to sex to bolster their bottom line. But the concept, which remains pure in many implementations, is romance for hire. The hosts flirt with the clients, flatter them, engage them in conversation. The clients return repeatedly to their favorites, buy them presents and drinks, flirt back. But with a few exceptions, it never leaves the context of the club. If host and client met on the street, they would be strangers. It's a game, a seduction that only exists in a particular context and everyone understands is an illusion."

John stared at Sherlock through the entire explanation, gobsmacked. "They've taken what you do and turned it into an industry," he said. "That's...something."

"It's a comfortable living, for many people," Sherlock said. He swung the bathroom door shut so he could see himself in the full-length mirror that hung on the outside.

"Not for Nicky Winston," John said. "Not any more."

"No," Sherlock said. He finished buttoning his shirt except for the top button, studied himself critically in the mirror, and then unbuttoned the next two down as well.

"I'm still coming, of course," John said. "Don't bother arguing with me." It didn't matter how uncomfortable watching Sherlock play with people made him, the whole point of his being in Japan was to help with the case.

To his surprise, Sherlock didn't protest any further; he only smiled a little at his reflection. "All right," he said. He spent several minutes fussing with his hair but evidently decided to leave it as it was. Then he opened a wooden box that he fished out of the bottom of his suitcase and selected a narrow gold chain that he fastened around his neck so that it just showed through the gap in his collar.

"Hey, what are you doing?" John said as Sherlock went to the closet and began to flick imperiously through John's hanging clothes. He slipped John's one black suit off its hangar and tossed it onto the bed next to him, then went back to look for shirts. A dress shirt with a faint gray pinstripe joined the suit.

"Put it on," Sherlock said briskly. John sat staring; what, was Sherlock dressing him now, like a piece of arm candy? He never usually minded what John wore on a case or any other time, although he did roll his eyes at the jumpers a fair bit. Sherlock sighed heavily, as if John was being impossibly dim. "We will have to go separately, to preserve our cover. You can't be you, obviously, so instead you will be a foreign businessman. Put the suit on."

“I can’t act,” John protested. “I’m rubbish at it.”

"I know, but you won't have to act much. You can even use your real name, if you like," Sherlock said. He went back to the wooden box and began sifting through the jewelry again. "You are in Japan on business- an insurance adjustor, perhaps, or a salesman- and your hosts suggested you take in the action in Roppongi. You’ll be chatting people up, not propositioning them, remember. Don't ask any overt questions about Winston, it will make them suspicious. Just steer the conversation. Here." Sherlock tossed him an item that he instinctively caught with his left hand. It was an inexpensive wedding band. "That will be sufficient to explain why you always look so guilty about everything." John had a feeling he'd just been insulted. "Go. Change." Sherlock made a shooing motion with his hands, and John slowly got up and took the clothes into the bathroom.

When he emerged, Sherlock had put his shoes on and was sitting on one of the beds counting a stack of Japanese banknotes into two neat piles. He looked up and studied John judiciously for a moment, then walked briskly over and began tweaking John's appearance. He popped his collar button open, deliberately creased the back of his jacket, and gave a few quick tugs to the dress shirt, creating wrinkles and folds. John stood with bemusement for the treatment, until Sherlock reached behind his head and deliberately rumpled his hair at the back, an unexpectedly intimate gesture. "Hey!" he protested, raising a hand to fend Sherlock off.

Sherlock slapped his hand away. "Hold still. You mustn't look as if you dressed up to come out, you've been at work all day." A few brisk twists of his trousers at the hips and Sherlock seemed satisfied with his results. He seized John's hand and slid a heavy silver-and-steel wristwatch with a flexible band past his knuckles and onto his wrist.

"Necktie?" John asked, fingering the collar button as Sherlock went back to the bed and scooped up one of the piles of banknotes.

"Of course not." Sherlock neatly folded the wad of notes and tucked it into John's trouser pocket. "Best not to carry your wallet in case of pickpockets, the cards may damage your cover anyway if someone saw them."

"Am I meant to be wealthy, then?" John asked. The bulge from the money felt quite conspicuous.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and scooped up the other pile. " _John._ In that suit? No one would believe it."

"What's wrong with my suit?" John glanced down at his clothing, which was not bespoke, but looked perfectly nice, he thought. "I paid one hundred and thirty quid for this."

"Yes," Sherlock said with disdain. "At Marks and Spencer."

"God, you are such a fashion snob," John grumbled.

"I wired Sir Ellery for funds this morning while you were asleep. This may be expensive- some of the clubs have cover charges, and you will be expected to buy drinks. Be generous but don't drink too much yourself if you can help it. You have enough experience drinking to know your own tolerances." Sherlock pocketed the second stack of notes. "These places cater to natives and resident aliens more than foreign visitors so all the prices will be quoted in yen. Don't tip anyone. If someone hints, it means they want you to buy more overpriced drinks." He paused in his lecture and gave John a careful, speculative going-over. John felt like he was at some sort of job interview. "That will do, I suppose."

John chuckled nervously. "All right then. Cab?"

"Two," Sherlock said. He flicked a business card out of his pocket and passed it to John. It was printed in garish purple ink and was for a club called Sweethearts. "We shouldn't arrive together. I will go first, wait here for five minutes and then come down and ask the concierge to hail you a cab. Give the card to the driver. I know you're going to watch me, whatever I say, but try not to make it too obvious."

Sherlock paused for a moment, then his stance changed, his expression shifted, and suddenly he looked completely different: sweet, open, a little vulnerable, and with a definite air of sensuality. He smiled at John, with a hint of shy reserve that was an obvious mask set over a conniving smugness that wasn't really Sherlock either. Deception upon deception. "See you later," he said in a breathy and altogether too suggestive voice, and disappeared out the door.

Sweethearts turned out to be a poky hole in the wall with a pink neon sign. The place consisted of one room with a lot of low tables surrounded by well-padded chairs, and a long shiny bar. John clumsily paid the cover with a small stack of yen notes, and stood by the door for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dim, pink-tinted lighting and his ears to the drone of Japanese pop music. Then a striking blonde woman was gently touching his arm with her fingertips, and smiling coyly.

"Hello," she said. "I don't think we've met- I'm Lily."

"John," he said, smiling and saying almost by reflex, "Please, may I buy you a drink?"

To John's shock, it was incredibly easy to play the character Sherlock created for him. He decided to be a salesman, and managed to talk convincingly enough about meetings and quotas for a moment when Lily asked, before laughing and saying he didn't want to discuss work. It wasn't so very long ago that John was a student, hanging out in bars and flirting with girls on a nightly basis, and it was easy to fall back on his memories. Treating Lily like a girl he was picking up in a bar worked just fine, and she seemed as comfortable with it as he did. She hung on his every word but kept up her own end of the conversation well, every inch the charming and witty companion.

John supposed it was flattering, to have the attention of such a smart and attractive woman; but he didn't understand how someone could be flattered _knowing_ that it was all a sham, and according to Sherlock everyone who came to these places knew. Who the hell wanted a pretend romance? Wasn't it worth the chance of rejection to try for a real one where you could _actually_ connect to another person, one who didn't just pretend to like and respect you because you kept buying incredibly over-priced and under-spiked drinks from her employers?

It was a long time before John felt confident enough to try to mention anything case-related. Lily didn't react when he dropped a reference to Nicky Winston, so he let it go and cautiously ran the conversation elsewhere for another ten minutes. Then he teased her about working holidays, and she told him a little guiltily that she was meant to be at an exchange program at a local uni, but her friend Carla hooked her up with this job. Carla worked at Club Divinity, and John filed the name away. Not a very productive conversation, but that was okay; John was getting his bearings, feeling things out, and growing more comfortable with his role and with the environment.

He scanned the room as frequently as he dared, and did his best not to let his eyes catch on Sherlock. John had spotted him when he first came in, of course, standing at one end of the bar with an almost waif-like redhead. Some time later he had moved across the room, and through most of John's conversation with Lily he sat on one of the squashy chairs with his knees very close to those of another woman. He smiled often, and seemed to constantly have a drink in his hand. After some forty-five minutes at the club, John performed a periodic check and saw Sherlock setting down his drink. They locked eyes, and John shifted his gaze back to Lily and began skillfully extricating himself from their conversation.

When John made it outside he saw Sherlock halfway up the block, lingering on the curb with a cigarette between his fingers before he turned and headed up the sidewalk. When he stopped under a light post, finishing his smoke, John walked past him and into the club he was standing in front of without looking at him or acknowledging him at all.

When Sherlock decided that they were done in that club, they played out the charade again.

John talked to at least a dozen women that night. None of them recognized the names Nicholas Winston or Aaron Vass, but he did learn a great deal more about the hostess business. At one point a woman calling herself Becca gigglingly confided in him that the hostesses received kickbacks on every bottle that a customer bought; when John heard that he ordered a bottle of champagne and grinned cheekily at her. Most of the hostesses he spoke with seemed cheerfully open and content, but one of them had a tension in her knuckles and a look in her eyes that reminded John of refugees he'd seen in Kabul. John had surreptitiously pressed a 5000 yen note into her palm as he left, but that look haunted him for the rest of the night.

John wasn't sure if the clubs Sherlock led them through that night were part of some predetermined checklist, if they were suggested by successive contacts with hostesses, or if this was the Sherlock Holmes version of a night on the town. The only patterns were that they never spent more than an hour in any one club and that the clubs got steadily seedier as the night wore on. In the third one, a girl John was talking to tried to put her hand on his dick. In the fourth, he glanced over at Sherlock and saw him receiving a lap dance from an enthusiastic hostess; John almost aspirated his gin and tonic and had to be patted on the back by his own companion. It was in the sixth that things got downright dangerous.

There was something about the atmosphere that was off, John could feel it the moment he walked in. The club was not just seedy, it was _sleazy_ : it lacked even the appearance of refinement, the drinks were watered more than usual, and the hostess he was hitting on had a very faint tremor in her hand and kept wiping her nose on her sleeve. John didn't typically frequent _those_ kinds of clubs, but he wasn't an idiot. So when he checked on Sherlock and saw him bent forward over his knees, head close to that of his companion as she made neat arrangements on the table in front of them, he went cold. The girl put the razor down and tilted her head to look up at him and Sherlock smiled lazily at her as he sat back and dug into his pocket. John wasn't even conscious of turning his back on the hostess he was with, because his eyes were stuck on Sherlock's hands, and they were rolling a banknote into a tube and Sherlock was leaning forward again and _holy fuck shit what was he playing at_.

John had his hands twisted into Sherlock's shirt and was dragging him up and shoving him roughly through the front door before he even thought about what he planned to do. Someone, maybe the girl who was with Sherlock, exclaimed, "Hey!" and John snarled, “Piss off!” because he was not in a mood to be polite and this was Captain John Motherfucking Watson of the RAMC that they were dealing with.

He didn't stop until he had flung Sherlock bodily up against the wall in an alley two buildings down, handling the taller man with a strength not normally hinted at in his build or demeanor. For once, Sherlock looked at him with open wonderment, clearly too startled to get the first word in.

"What. Was. That." John ground it out between clenched teeth.

"Really, John, I know what I'm doing. It's of no great consequence. Not when it's part of a case." Sherlock's face slid into its typical expression of bland amusement, and John swiveled 45 degrees and slammed his open palm against the wall so hard that it sent a sharp shock of pain up his arm. In that moment it was the only way he could prevent himself punching Sherlock Holmes right in his stupid face.

"No consequence. You, a recovering addict, were about to casually snort cocaine for no reason at all. And it's of no consequence." John was amazed that his voice was so calm and conversational. Inside his head he was shouting at the top of his lungs.

The amusement disappeared and Sherlock looked nearly destroyed for a moment before his mouth turned down in an angry line. "Mycroft," he said, his voice dark with threat.

"Wrong for once," John said. "Lestrade told me."

"Oh, Lestrade." Sherlock sounded more himself then, but still looked distinctly unhappy. "There was a reason I didn't tell you about certain aspects of my past, you know."

"Yes, I do know," John said. "The reason is that you are an idiot." They stayed silent a moment, Sherlock lowering his head as if it was weighed down by John's steady gaze. "Is it really worth going back?" John asked. "Over a case you only took to twit Mycroft?"

Sherlock looked back up at John and seemed to consider for a long moment. "No," he said. "No, I suppose it isn't." He opened his mouth again, as if he wanted to say something else, then closed it.

"Don't try it again," John said.

"No," Sherlock agreed immediately.

“Promise me. Or I'm flying back to London right now," John said. It was an idle threat, he would never abandon Sherlock to do stupid and insane things all by himself, and Sherlock probably knew it.

But Sherlock didn't pause or flinch when he looked John straight in the eyes and replied, "I won't. I'll break character first, I swear."

John nodded sharply, and felt himself relax incrementally. Sherlock's tension seemed to ease, too, as he watched John calm down. Sherlock stood up straighter and flicked his shirt back into its proper lines. "Well," he said, clearing his throat. "We can't go back to _that_ club. But I don't expect we'd want to, in any case."

"All those girls were junkies," John said. He felt...not quite disapproving, really. It wasn't the girls' fault that Sherlock didn't have enough sense to say no, and it wasn't his business to police _their_ choices. It was more sad than anything. If they made any money in that hole, it probably went straight back up their noses by the end of the night.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "They're not all volunteers, either. There were strong hints of the slave trade about that place. The girls all kept looking at the Japanese man standing by the bathroom door, did you notice?"

Of course John hadn't noticed. "The slave trade? You mean- what, human trafficking?" Women- and sometimes men- forced into prostitution against their will, passports stolen and debts held over their heads to keep them at work. It was something you heard about on the telly. You didn't expect to see it in reality, at a bar you patronized. John thought of all the money they had pumped into these places tonight, maybe a thousand pounds all told, and felt ill.

"It's not all of them, John." Sherlock was calm and unruffled, but he was still frowning, and John felt that he was at least slightly bothered himself. "Most of the women we spoke with tonight enjoy their work. But this one has a foul stink, metaphorically speaking."

John thought to check his wristwatch. "Christ, it's almost five. No wonder I'm knackered." He was very slightly tipsy, too, for all that he'd not consumed more than a drink and a half in any one club.

"We can head back to the hotel,” Sherlock said. “I think we've seen enough to be going on with."

"I, um- I didn't really find anything out," John confessed. "A couple names of other hostesses, other clubs. No one I talked to knew about Nicky."

"That's all right," Sherlock said. He started up the alley towards the far end, and John fell into step with him. "Tonight was mostly scouting. I've a better idea of how to focus our investigations now. Nicholas Winston's letters had no hint of the whorehouse about them; we want the clubs at the higher end of the spectrum, and now I know how to recognize them.”

On the cab ride back to the hotel, John drowsed lightly against the window. He was aware of Sherlock's eyes on him through most of the journey, but neither of them said anything more.


	2. Chapter 2

They found Aaron Vass at Club Divinity the next night. Sherlock came to John in the men's room, which was about the only place in a hostess club two men who ostensibly didn't know one another could talk for a minute. "Aaron Vass is here," he announced.

"Christ!" said John, who was just finishing at the urinal. He zipped up before he turned around to glare at Sherlock. "You are so inappropriate sometimes, it's unbelievable."

Sherlock just gave him a superior look and continued. "We'll stay here until he leaves and catch him outside." Then he ducked back out into the main room.

When John came out of the restroom, he discreetly settled up his bill, with enough added to hopefully last the rest of the time he'd be waiting. Thus he was able to follow immediately when Sherlock abruptly stood and left the club, then pursued a slender, European-looking man up the sidewalk. "Aaron Vass," Sherlock called, his voice just loud enough to break through the noise of the crowd.

Vass stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to round on them, his face twisted rictus of anger and fear. "Leave me the fuck alone! I saw you watching me and I'm _not interested_ , right!"

John was taken aback, but Sherlock immediately straightened his shoulders, shed the fake persona, and said in his normal tone of voice, "My name is Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Vass, and I'm here to investigate the disappearance of Nicholas Winston."

It was the right thing to say, because Vass blinked and dropped right out of anger and into confusion and embarrassment. "Oh," he said. "Um."

"Can we speak with you for a few minutes?" Sherlock asked pleasantly.

"There's a noodle place across the way," John muttered helpfully, and Sherlock nodded.

When they had Vass at one of the tiny tables with a bowl of ramen, Sherlock jumped back in. "When was the last time you saw Winston?"

"Three months ago this Tuesday," Vass said instantly. "I can tell you down to the fucking minute. He was my mate. I feel almost responsible for-" He swallowed convulsively and gave the nest of noodles in his bowl a particularly harsh stab of the chopsticks.

"Because you got him the job?" John asked.

"Yeah," Vass said. He had a mop of thick blond hair that brushed his collar at the back, and the fringe came close to hiding his eyes; he had a habit of scrubbing it out of the way with the back of his hand. "He was tutoring, to make some extra money, right? But the money was shit, and I told him about hosting. You can make 800 pounds a week, plus the women give you gifts. Watches, clothes, one guy I know got a _car_."

"So you set him up at Avec Amour," Sherlock prompted, but it was hardly necessary. Vass was eager to talk.

"Yeah. It was a great job. He liked it, I saw him with the women and he was good at it, too. Mr. Yamamoto, he comped me at his hostess club next door for a week to say thanks for sending Nicky to him." Vass was breathing hard, staring down at his bowl. "Then, that night- Nicky called me a couple hours before work. Said he met a guy outside the club- he was good with the women but he liked guys, you know- and they were going on a date. The guy had promised him a brand new smart phone, he was all excited. I thought it was okay, Nicky was a big guy, knew how to look after himself. If I had just asked who the date was, where they were going, maybe-" Vass broke off and his breath shuddered.

"Did he seem unhappy or distressed at all?" Sherlock asked.

"No! No, hell no, he was happy, making all that money, partying on his days off. But he missed his dad, said they only had each other since his mum died, and he was going to leave Tokyo before Christmas and go home. We talked about keeping in touch once he left..."

John did his best to emanate enough sympathy to make up for Sherlock's lack. "Thanks, Aaron. You've been very helpful." He made a face at Sherlock over Vass' head, daring him to contradict.

“Yeah, right," Vass muttered. "The police asked the same questions."

"I'm not the police," Sherlock said mildly. Then, as if it were an afterthought, "What exactly did he tell you about his...date? What did he say they were going to do?"

Vass thought for a moment. "He said...they were going for a drive."

Sherlock nodded sharply and stood up. "That's all, then. Come on, John." And he was off.

"Thanks again," John said hastily as he slid out of his chair and dashed after Sherlock. "Where to now?" John said when he caught up. "Nicky's club? Avec Amour?"

"No," Sherlock said. "I still don't know the right questions to ask."

"Then where are we going?"

"Nowhere. Walking helps me think," Sherlock said. "Someone is preying on these young men, John."

"You got that from the fact that Nicholas Winston met a man for a date?" John asked.

"We've far more data than that,” Sherlock declared. “Aaron Vass was alert to the possibility that a man might be watching him in the club. He was terrified when I approached him. Yet he spoke of Winston meeting a man outside his place of work as if there was nothing unusual about it. He didn't say, 'I thought it was safe,' he said 'Nicky knew how to look after himself.'" Sherlock glanced at John. "Conclusion, hosts frequently meet men for such liaisons and they go wrong more often than ordinary probability would suggest. Conjecture, whatever happened to Nicholas Winston has happened before. We'll have to find another victim to get further data on the responsible party."

"Brilliant. And how do we get that?" Sherlock just gave him a look, and John groaned. "Oh lord. More clubs?"

"More clubs," Sherlock said, with a tiny smile at John's obvious displeasure.

There was something to be said for Sherlock's _right questions_ , because they ended up leading John to just the data Sherlock was looking for. He was standing at another urinal in another disgusting men's room when a baby-faced redhead dressed in a designer suit and more jewelry than a businessman would wear walked in and stood at the urinal furthest away from John. Because he was now looking for it, John saw the way the kid watched him out of the corner of his eye, shoulders tensing, ready for fight-or-flight. When they were both standing at the sink, still politely ignoring each other with perfect men's room etiquette, John took a shot.

"Hey, I recognize you- Avec Amour, was it? Only, I was over there looking for Nicky Winston, but I didn't see him...Y'know where I could find him these days?"

The young man had begun frantically yanking paper towels from the dispenser when John spoke up, but now he stopped. John knew he had scored a hit. "You knew Nicky?" His accent was American, his voice slightly slurred. Probably from drink, though John couldn’t be sure whether the scent of alcohol was coming from the man’s breath or was just the general reek of the club.

"Sort of. He dated my kid brother a bit in uni, and Will said I should look him up while I was here." The lie was easier than John expected it to be. "Does he not work at the club any more?"

"No," the kid said. "He'd dead."

"Oh my god," John said. He couldn't cry on command, but he could sound shocked and appalled. "He was- he was so _young_. He and Will aren't real close, but- shit, what am I going to tell him?"

The kid turned to him, tense but dry-eyed. "What school did they go to?"

"University College London," John said immediately, deeply grateful that he had taken the time to read all the letters that Sir Ellery had provided them with.

The kid considered John for a moment and nodded, slowly. "I'm Brad," he said.

"John."

"Let's go get something to eat, and I'll tell you about it."

While Brad settled his bill, John flipped out his phone and rapidly sent a text to Sherlock's temporary Japanese mobile number: "Gathering data. STAY HERE. JW." If Sherlock suddenly showed up, the tiny bit of rapport between John and Brad could easily shatter.

Soon John found himself sitting in his third ramen shop of the night, slurping up another order of something weird and delicious. He'd asked Brad to order for him, confessing his inability to read Japanese, which made the kid smile. The shop also served beer, and by the time they got beyond small talk Brad was on his second can.

"Nicky disappeared three months ago," Brad said. "Some fucking scumbag he went on a date with killed him, I know it."

"I- how did Will never hear about the funeral?" John muttered, as if confused.

"They haven't found him, not yet," Brad said. "The problem is the police just don't _care_." There was anger there, bitterness, but John could see it was about more than just his friend. There was something personal.

Time to be careful. "About Nicky?"

"About any of us," Brad sad viciously. "We're just gaijin to them. What happens to us doesn't _count_. Not even if we have rich dads like Nicky did."

"That's not right," John said fervently. "It's not right."

"Damn straight it's not! Just because a man goes out with another man doesn't mean he's-" Brad cut off abruptly. John sensed that he was getting closer to some kind of secret. The alcohol had brought it closer to the surface, and if he could strike the proper tone than it might pop out.

John didn't have to fake the rumble of remembered anger in his voice. "Don't I know it, mate. The shit Will used to get when he was in school- people can be bloody idiots." Harry had been able to stand up on her own feet, but it had never stopped John wishing he could deliver some beatings on her behalf.

The sympathy did the trick. Guilt flooded through John, who was already feeling like a hypocrite. Here he was, manipulating Brad just to get information for a case, when he got irritated at Sherlock for the same thing. But he didn't feel bad enough to stop Brad from spilling his secrets.

"I used to go on dates like that, before work. Not any more, since-" A pause, a deep breath. "He asked if I wanted to go for a drive, to see the ocean. God, how fucking stupid was I?" John didn't say anything, and after a moment Brad resumed. "His name was Ken. We went up to his apartment- opened a bottle of wine. Next thing I remember, I'm back in his car puking out the window and he's telling me I drank too much and passed out. Man, I've been hung over, that's not what that was. My mouth tasted like shit, and my- I _hurt_." He began methodically shredding his paper napkin, not meeting John's eyes. "I couldn't work for two days, I felt like such shit. He gave me 60,000 yen, told me it was for the time I'd have to take off."

"And the police wouldn't help?" John said.

"Fucking _pigs_ ," Brad snarled, flinging down the remains of the napkin. "They thought I was a whore. The cop kept saying, 'But why, you must have egged him on.' He kept after me for two hours, and when I still wouldn't tell him what he wanted to hear, he finally offered to take me to the hospital. I said no. I'd fucking had enough."

"Those bastards, that's unbelievable." John couldn't have been more sincere, and Brad flashed a small, grateful smile at him.

"Yeah, well." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this. But- it happens that way. Nobody talks about it, but I wasn't the first. And I know it was one of those creeps that got Nicky."

Brad changed the subject after that, and John decided not to press any further. The moment had passed, and Brad was clearly feeling over-exposed. They talked of trivialities while they finished their food, and Brad was quick to get up when he was done eating.

"Thanks," John said softly. "Will would want to know what happened."

"Yeah," Brad said. "I'll see you." He was hardly out the door before a drunk in a tattered overcoat slid off his stool at the counter and took Brad's place.

"I think we may have underestimated your acting ability, John, that was quite fair." Sherlock, of course.

John chuckled. "I thought I told you to stay put."

" _Please_." John knew it had been a silly thing to say, so he just shrugged. “The clubs are shutting. The good ones, at any rate. We'll have to pay our visit to Avec Amour first thing this evening."

John checked his watch. Somehow the time had slipped by and it was just past 3:30 am. "Time for sleep, then."

"Yes." Sherlock removed the overcoat on the way out and left it slung across the back of a chair.

"Does this mean you know the right questions now?" John asked once they were in the cab.

"Yes," Sherlock said, and flashed a grin like a shark's. "Who is Ken? And where is he now?"

It was the first question, plus the fact that they were the wrong gender to be customers, that got them thrown out of Avec Amour in the early evening of night three. The bouncer was a hair shorter than John and looked about as threatening as a secondary school boy, but when Sherlock tried to protest their expulsion the man swiftly used an absolutely vicious shoulder lock to maneuver him to the door.

"I do prefer the direct approach," Sherlock mourned, shaking out his arm. Then he led John to the sister hostess club next door and the two of them worked the staff there instead.

John was getting better at steering the conversation without making himself seem suspicious, and several hostesses were willing to talk about the "curb creeps," guys who hung around outside the clubs hassling hostesses and the female customers of the host clubs; either because they had been barred from the clubs for behaving inappropriately or because they couldn't afford to come in and buy the girls a drink like a normal person. Some of them were gay men, looking to arrange unauthorized side dates with the hosts. John gathered that hostess bars were a dime a dozen, and it was reasonably easy to find transsexual hostesses as well, but finding fake gay romance was a little trickier.

Sherlock was sitting a few meters away from John, but must have been monitoring his conversations as well as his own, because he was at John's side in less than five seconds when a hostess dropped the name "Ken" into conversation.

"We need his name, his real name," Sherlock said. The hostess, a Danish woman called Yasmin, just glared at him. "His _name_ ," Sherlock insisted.

"Stop pushing," John said under his breath. In a minute she was going to call the bouncer, she was glancing that way now.

Sherlock gave her a hard look. "You don't know his real name. But you've seen him, you'll know him if you see him again." Sherlock pulled out his wad of cash, very obviously making a show of it for Yasmin. He peeled off three 5,000 yen notes and laid them side by side on the bar. "That's almost a thousand kroner. Get me his _meishi_ and it's yours."

"What about an advance?" Yasmin said calmly. Sherlock picked up two of the bills and nodded at the third, which she took. "Wait here." She set down her drink and walked out the front door.

"What's a _meishi_?" John asked.

"Japanese business card." Sherlock leaned on the bar and took a sip of Yasmin's abandoned drink, then grimaced and put it back down. “I need something more than a nickname to locate him.”

They only waited about five minutes before a suited Japanese man with slicked-back hair walked through the door, paused, and then walked straight up to them. "I am Matsu Yamamoto." John remembered hearing Vass mention a Yamamoto who owned Avec Amour and its sister club. He glanced at Sherlock. Uh oh. "You are looking for Nicholas Winston? He no longer works here."

"I am well aware," Sherlock said coolly.

Yamamoto studied Sherlock intently, looking him up and then down as if appraising him. "Didn't I just throw you out of my other club?"

"Yes. But you have yet to throw us out of this one." Sherlock stared back, unintimidated.

Yamamoto suddenly threw back his head in a full-throated laugh that quickly turned into a nasty smoker's cough. "Ha," he said once he had his breath back. "You have balls. I respect that." He produced a small rectangle and held it out to Sherlock between two fingers. Sherlock took the card and examined it. "I kept this when I banned that _sukebe_ from my clubs. You can ask my girls whatever you want, as long as you pay for their time." Yamamoto walked back out, presumably returning to the other club.

Yasmin approached from behind John, and he startled badly when she pushed past him to face Sherlock across the corner of the bar. He pocketed the business card and produced the remaining two 5000 yen notes, which he folded in half and handed to Yasmin. "Thank you," she said, smiling a bit.

Sherlock jerked a nod at her, then headed for the door. "Cover the bill, John," he said, completely absorbed in something on the screen of his mobile.

John pulled out his own dwindling supply of banknotes, which he used to settle up his and Sherlock's tabs.

"Is he always like that?" Yasmin asked from his elbow, twirling the ice in her drink.

John sighed. "Yes, pretty much," he said, and dashed out the door. Luckily Sherlock was still leaning against the front of the building and drawing dirty looks from the tout who stood on the sidewalk trying to lure in customers. "Nice of you to wait for a change," John said.

"Ken is Kenji Nakano, a local real estate developer," Sherlock announced.

"Okay," John said. "So our suspect has a name."

"More than a name," Sherlock said. "I've found his home address. We'll pay him a visit tomorrow, but for now we can go back to the hotel. There's nothing further we can learn here tonight."

They stopped in an internet cafe so Sherlock could print out a photo he'd found of Nakano online, and then passed the rest of the evening quietly in the hotel room. Sherlock posted to his website's forum and composed sarcastic e-mails to Lestrade and Mycroft on John's laptop, while John ordered room service and lolled on his bed reading his novel and, after some initial embarrassment, the book of Japanese sex terminology. John was hardly going to remember all these words in a language he didn't speak, but it made for fascinating reading. It had illustrations, too. He was giggling at a bizarre line drawing that managed to be dirty despite the inexplicable failure of the artist to draw in the penises when he noticed Sherlock looking over the top of the laptop at him.

"Did you really think we were going to need this thing?" John demanded, holding the book aloft.

"One never knows." But Sherlock didn't hide his smirk quite in time to keep John from seeing it.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock woke John earlier in the afternoon than he had on the past few days, and they took a cab south along Tokyo Bay, to a stylish block of modern flats on a low cliff overlooking the water. A woman was exiting the building just as they got out of the cab, and Sherlock shoved the photo of Nakano with the address scrawled on the back into John's hand and rushed to catch the front door. That stopped them needing to be buzzed in. Therefore, it was only when they stopped in front of Nakano's door and Sherlock produced his familiar kit of lockpicks that John realized "paying Nakano a visit" was a euphemism for "daytime housebreaking."

"Those were in your checked baggage, weren't they," John muttered, glancing up and down the hallway for witnesses as Sherlock slipped on a pair of latex gloves and bent over the keyhole. "Is that even legal?"

"Of course," Sherlock said, and twisted the doorknob. He held onto the door and shut it behind them, then passed John a second pair of gloves. "Put these on before you touch anything." Sherlock was examining the sitting room and attached kitchenette like a kid on Christmas trying to decide which present to open first.

"Aren't there- security cameras or anything?"

"Only in the lobby and the elevator," Sherlock said, peeking into the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. "They'll have us on tape coming up to this floor, but it won't matter because no one will have any reason to think we were inside this flat."

John reluctantly slid the gloves on. "What are we looking for, exactly?"

"Evidence!" Sherlock said, lifting a boning knife out of a drawer and examining it critically. He pulled a penlight out of his pocket and briefly played a beam of violet up and down the blade.

"What is that?"

"UV light." He looked at John and answered the question before he could ask it. " _Bloodstains_ , John. Obviously." He put the knife back and began examining the drain in the sink with the aid of the penlight.

"Obviously," John muttered. He rifled through the desk in the sitting room, feeling rather silly. He couldn't deduce from insignificant clues the way Sherlock could, so what was he supposed to find? A signed confession? The top drawer held an appointment diary. "Sherlock, you read Japanese?" he asked, and threw it to him.

Sherlock caught it and spent several minutes paging through the appointments, while John went to a set of shelves mounted on the wall below the television and pulled out a handful of slim DVD cases. The cases were the transparent, unlabeled sort and the titles on the discs themselves were in Japanese; but the explicit pictures of both real and cartoon women printed directly on the discs were indicative of their contents. John carefully put the DVDs back on the shelf as Sherlock replaced the diary in the desk. "Nothing," Sherlock said. "Let's see the bedroom."

They moved on to the western-style bedroom at the back of the flat. John looked through Nakano's nightstand drawer, finding condoms, lubricant, and a small selection of sex toys, but no indication that he used them for anything other than consensual, murder-free sex. Sherlock stripped the full-size bed bare and examined the entire mattress with his penlight. Finally he put it back in his pocket and began to remake the bed, shaking his head. John went into the adjoining bathroom and went through the medicine cabinet. "Sherlock," he called again, when he found a prescription bottle that was without a label and looked as if it never had one. "What do you make of this?" He tossed it over.

Sherlock popped off the lid and dumped several pills into his palm. "Unfamiliar. Do you recognize them?"

"Can't say I have the appearance of every prescription drug in the world memorized, no," John said.

"Mmm. Pity." Sherlock held one of the pills up to the light, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger.

"So how do we find out what it is, keeping in mind that 'try one and see what happens' is not a viable option?" John asked.

Sherlock put the last pill back in the bottle and set it on the sink. "He probably ordered them online. There'll be more." Sherlock went back to the bedroom and began to root through the closet. "Ah!" he said, emerging with a cardboard box which turned out to be packed full of more prescription bottles. Sherlock dug a packing slip out of the bottom and examined the Japanese characters for several long minutes. "If I am reading this correctly," he finally said. "These bottles all contain flunitrazepam."

"Rohypnol," John said. "Shit."

"Anterograde amnesia," Sherlock mused. "Powerful sedative effects. Extremely prone to cause toxicity when combined in sufficient quantities with alcohol." He carefully replaced the packing slip, and then the box, where he found them.

"That's what I call evidence," John said.

"It could be that Nakano is merely an insomniac," Sherlock said mildly.

John forced a laugh. "Must be one hell of a case of insomnia." There had to be at least two dozen bottles in the box.

Sherlock, still sitting in front of the closet, suddenly leaned forward and pulled out a small, hard-sided black case. He popped it open, and John could see that it contained a neat little digital camcorder. Sherlock slammed the case shut and shoved it back into the closet, then rushed back to the sitting room without saying a word. John followed and found him on his knees in front of the DVD shelves, yanking discs down and glancing at them before tossing them to the floor. He pried one of the cases open and fumbled the disc into the DVD player mounted above the shelves and under the television.

"Okay, if you're going to review his porn collection, I'm leaving," John said. Sherlock shot him a furious look over his shoulder as he reached up to press the power button on the telly.

The image on the screen was a steady three-quarter view of Nakano's bed- rock steady, he must have a tripod stashed somewhere- and sprawled out in its center was the still form of a young man, his eyes shut and his long hair pooling on the pillow beneath his cheek. "Who the hell is that?" John said. "It's not Brad or Nicky."

"No," Sherlock said, his voice calm as Nakano walked into shot and began to strip off the man's clothes. "Brad told you, didn't he? He wasn't the first."

John stooped to pick up some of the cases that Sherlock had pulled down, and looked at the discs. Each was marked with two numbers, followed by a string of Japanese characters that John couldn't read. The discs in his hands all started with the number 10. "These...these are dates, aren't they?" he asked. Sherlock, leaning back on his palms so he could see the television, didn't answer. John flipped through the DVDs still on the shelf. There were dozens. _Hundreds._ Apparently only the top shelf was devoted to commercial pornography, the rest were all homemade. The year changed as you went higher up the shelves: 10, 09, 08, all the way back to a scant handful spread across 97, 98, 99. "How is this possible? DVDs weren't invented yet when some of these were made."

"Actually, DVDs were introduced to the market in 1996. But it doesn't really matter; it's simple enough to transfer analog tape to digital, although the quality is ultimately lower," Sherlock said, head still tipped back to watch the screen. John glanced at it and saw that Nagano was fully naked and erect, fondling the genitals of his unconscious victim. John looked back to Sherlock, whose normally expressive face was completely blank and unreadable.

"Can we please turn this off?" John snapped.

Sherlock jerked his eyes away from the screen and hit the button to open the drawer on the DVD player. "Of course," he said, and John was relieved to see that the empty look had been knocked off of his face.

Not for the first time, John wondered what Sherlock's experiences with sex and romance had been, that he didn't relate to the concepts in anything approaching a normal way. Probably John would never know, because he'd rather have bitten off his own tongue than ask.

Sherlock replaced the DVDs on the shelves, and went through the rest of the 2010 discs while John checked to make sure everything else in the flat was as they'd found it. When he came back from replacing the one bottle of Rohypnol in the medicine cabinet, Sherlock said quietly, "There's no recording from the night Winston disappeared, or the week thereafter."

"So Nakano didn't kidnap him?" John asked. "Or he didn't tape it?"

"Or he destroyed the recording," Sherlock said. "I consider that possibility to be the most likely, given his otherwise obsessive documentary tendencies."

"We've got to take this to the police," John said, staring at the wall of DVDs.

"If you like," Sherlock said amiably. "But it won't do any good."

John glared at him. "There are hundreds of victims, Sherlock! He's been doing this to people for _years_. How can you not find this horrifying?"

Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow. "Evidence is only relevant insofar as it helps solve the case," he said. "The existence of other victims does not lead to that end. Therefore, not relevant."

John just shook his head. _I should be used to this by now, I really should._ "Let's just get the hell out of here."

He'd thought Sherlock was humoring him about going to the police, so he was somewhat surprised when the cab pulled up to the police station they'd visited on their first day. This time Hayashi kept them waiting for more than an hour before he received them. Evidently they were being punished for not taking the hint he gave them at their initial visit. "How can I help you, Homes-san?" Hayashi said, still eliding the l. This time it seemed less like a quirk of accent and more like a deliberate sign of disrespect. But Sherlock took no notice, so John tried not to either.

"Kenji Nakano is a serial rapist," Sherlock said without preamble. "He lures young men to his home, doses them with hypnotic drugs mixed with alcohol, and rapes them while they are unconscious. If you search his flat, you will find extremely suggestive quantities of Rohypnol and hundreds of films he made of his assaults."

"And how do you know of this?" Hayashi asked.

"I told you before, Hayashi-san. I am a detective." Sherlock returned Hayashi's stare. "We've spoken to one of the many victims- Bradley Friedenthal."

" _Sherlock_!" John hissed, because he didn't know how Sherlock got Brad's last name, and that was _not_ okay.

"I remember him," Hayashi said, sitting back in his chair and frowning. "He refused the rape kit. There was nothing we could do about that."

"Because you _badgered_ him," John couldn't help saying. "You called him a liar until he gave up."

Hayashi frowned. "Not me, one of my men. But sexual assault is a very serious charge to make against a man as powerful as Kenji Nakano," he said. Was John imagining the stress he put on the word _powerful_? "I can't blame him for wanting to make sure the accusation was true."

"If you're accusing his victims of being prostitutes, I'd think you would want to look into that at least," John ground out.

Hayashi looked surprised. “I don't care if Nakano is gay, or if these young men are. It's not my business,” he said. “If it isn't vaginal intercourse, it's not prostitution and not illegal. Even if it was for money, which they say it wasn't.” He shrugged.

“Nicholas Winston is probably dead,” Sherlock Holmes said. “And if he's dead, Nakano killed him.”

Hayashi spread his hands wide. “Then where is the body?” he said reasonably. “This long after his disappearance, with no sign, the odds say that Winston is dead. But I can't arrest someone with Nakano's connections without _evidence_. He will destroy me, and then he will go free.”

He stood up. "Find me a body. Find me something concrete that specifically links Nakano to Winston. I can't do anything with suppositions.”

John seethed all the way to the taxi, but it took him a while to think of something intelligent to say. "So anything is legal except vaginal sex?" he finally came up with.

"Mm," Sherlock said, flicking through menus on his phone. He had left Hayashi's office just as unconcerned as when he entered it, and John was finding it hard not to transfer his anger at Hayashi onto Sherlock. "Essentially. There are clubs to cater to every taste- strip clubs, exotic roleplay, oral sex, anal play, and so on and so on. Most of it is in Kabukicho but Roppongi is where the foreigners, particularly Europeans, work and play. Which is fortunate for us, because foreigners aren't even allowed into most of the establishments in Kabukicho."

John stared at him. "Where the hell did you learn all this? Does Frommer's make a guide to fucked up Japanese nightlife?"

"Just because you are a cultural imperialist doesn't mean we all have to be," Sherlock said.

"That's not fair, I didn't say- I don't have a problem with- God _damn_ it, Sherlock, you saw those places," John snapped. "You weren't okay with those sleazy clubs the other night, and you sure as _hell_ weren't okay with those videos at Nakano's place, so stop acting tetchy with me just so you won't have to acknowledge that this whole thing bothers you." John turned himself away from Sherlock as far as he was able without sliding off the seat entirely, and did his best to ignore him. Of course, John being John, it only lasted about three minutes.

"Nakano kidnapped Nicky and killed him," John said to the window. "He must’ve done."

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. When John turned back to him, he had set his phone down on his thigh and was staring at it absently. He worried at his lower lip with his fingers, evidently deep in thought. He leaned forward and rapped on the glass. "Avec Amour, Roppongi," he told the driver.

"What are we doing?" John asked.

"We're out of leads," Sherlock said with grim finality. "There's nothing for it, we'll have to lure him in, and I need to talk to Yamamoto."

"The manager?" asked John. "We already visited that club; we've talked to all the staff."

"He hasn't come back because he needs something new," Sherlock said. "The promise of a fresh victim."

John had a sinking suspicion he knew exactly to whom Sherlock was referring. "No," he said. "Absolutely and emphatically no."

Sherlock just looked placidly back at him. "The hosts and hostesses tell us that Nakano likes to hang about the clubs during and after hours, scouting for new- talent," he said. "All I am going to do is make myself highly visible, by creating a reason to be present at the appropriate times."

"You mean pretend to be a host," John said. Sherlock could probably do it, too; with his complexion and that _face_ he looked like he was ten years younger even _without_ disguises. Nakano wouldn’t be able to resist. But that wasn’t the point. "Trick a serial rapist into kidnapping you. So you can- what? Talk him into confessing? I wish I could say this was _the_ dumbest idea you've had, but we know that's not true. I'd still have to say it's in the top five, though."

Sherlock lifted and dropped one shoulder. "He works by surprise, by taking advantage of people's trust with poisoned drinks. I'm hardly likely to fall victim to that ploy."

John’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me. You _do_ remember that I had to stop you from voluntarily swallowing poison on the second day I knew you?”

“That was different,” Sherlock said. “Jefferson Hope was interesting and _clever_. Kenji Nakano is not clever, he’s an incompetent deviant with social standing and police connections. Obvious and boring. If we were back in London I wouldn’t even bother. And the missing person we were sent here to find is already dead.”

"If we know Nicky is dead, what's the good of risking your life?" John demanded. “Because you must recognize that’s what you’re doing. You don’t know what he has at his disposal besides Rohypnol.”

Sherlock gave him a look of exasperation. "Well we are already here, we might as well finish solving it before we fly home. Besides, you saw the tapes, John. It's going to happen again unless we can produce a body for police inspection." And he was right, damn it. John was running out of excuses. “Infiltration is the only investigative method left us. Yamamoto will agree to let me work for him on a temporary basis, especially once I tell him I'm willing to work for free.”

"All right," John said grimly. "If you can talk them into letting you play a host, what am I going to do? _I'm_ not going to pass muster for that job."

"You're going to stand by your mobile," Sherlock said. "I'll call when I have something."

John exploded again. " _Hell_ no. You can do this crazy, stupid stunt, okay, you've convinced me it's necessary. But you're not doing it by yourself, I'm coming along to keep an eye on you. So you'd better put that brain of yours to work thinking up a cover story for me, because if you don't I _will_ stand directly behind you the entire time you're at that club.”

Sherlock glowered. "Sometimes I don't know why I bring you on these outings. You are _constantly_ in the way." That stung, but John just lifted his chin slightly higher, refusing to take the bait. " _Fine_ ," Sherlock spat. "I'll ask Yamamoto to let you work as a bouncer. You're small, but you can look very intimidating in the right light."

John couldn't keep the smirk off his face, but Sherlock ignored it, losing his annoyance as he thought through the persona he was creating for John. "You can wear something that accentuates the musculature in your arms; if you don't have anything appropriate we can buy you a few shirts this afternoon. A large watch, thick id bracelet, blocky rings...that will help create the appearance of solidity, dependability. You don't have any tattoos but we might not be able to count on anyone here to recognize the RAMC emblem, so perhaps just as well. Your posture is still military; we'll just trim your hair up a bit so it looks more like it did when you were fresh back."

John was grinning. "God, I love when you do that." A pleased look flitted across Sherlock's face and was gone.

Yamamoto agreed to both Sherlock's proposals instantly, and they began that evening. Yamamoto hauled Sherlock off somewhere and told John to find the other bouncer, but the slight Japanese man found John first. “Naoki Okada,” he declared, extending a hand. “The boss says you're going to work here a while.”

“John Watson.” They shook, and John could see the younger man frankly assessing him, testing his grip. Okada had clearly seen a few brawls in his time, he was watching the entire room even as he sized John up. “Can you teach me that armlock you used the other night?” John asked on impulse.

Okada laughed. “Oh, I'm going to like you, I can tell,” he said. “You're a soldier? You look like a soldier.”

“Used to be. British Army.” Normally he's so unobtrusive, but a quick wardrobe change and Sherlock had made him _obvious_. How the hell did he do it?

“My brother is in the _Jieitai_ ,” Okada said, smiling. “I was a judoka, until I hurt my knee. Maybe will be again, but- still healing.”

It was easy after that. Okada kept John at the door with him until he had some idea what to look for, and then they took it in turns to circulate and man the door. John adjusted to watching Okada the same way he watched Sherlock, ready to act as backup if necessary. By the end of the night he and Naoki were on a first-name basis.

“Making friends?” Sherlock said snappishly as they left, evidently exhausted by a long night of pretending to be charming.

“Something like that,” John said, and put Sherlock into Naoki's armlock. The expression on Sherlock's face kept him giggling all the way to the cab.

Their "investigation" quickly degenerated into a series of mind-numbing routines. They got up in mid-afternoon, dressed- Sherlock in some version of his designer formal wear, John neatly but more casually, although Sherlock always insisted _no jumpers_ \- had coffee, and John forced Sherlock to eat something so he wouldn't be drinking on an empty stomach. They went to the club and they worked. John watched the door, circulated, occasionally had a quiet word with an overly insistent woman or one of the guys who showed up outside to ogle and occasionally harass the customers as they departed. Twice he had to eject patrons, both times earning Naoki's nod of approval for his polite firmness. Once he threw a punch at one of the creepy curb guys, who was actually there to hit on the hosts as they left, and tried to jump on one when his advances were rejected. It was done by the time Naoki got outside, and he only had to clap John on the back and usher the shaken host back into the club. Naoki taught him how to say "we would like it if you left now, please" and "fuck off or else" in Japanese.

Sherlock smiled and flirted and made witty conversation with the female patrons, pretended to get drunk, smoked constantly – they had a bit of a row over that, but Sherlock insisted it was necessary to his role and in comparison to the cocaine it seemed almost harmless - and wandered out to the street to lure in potential customers and scan the crowds for any sign of Kenji Nakano. Except for the cab rides, John and Sherlock barely talked to each other in public; they worried about blowing Sherlock's cover, which depended on him seeming utterly available. So after the club closed, when Sherlock stood outside flirting with passing men and looking for their mark, John stayed inside until it was time to go. Some of the hosts headed straight home, and some headed off on dates with customers of one kind or another, but at least half of them stayed behind on any given night.

Joined by hostesses from the sister club next door, they would open a few bottles of wine and get epically drunk. They talked about the jobs that hadn't paid enough, the families they didn't tell what they did for a living because they'd be ashamed, their plans to save for just a few more weeks and then go home, and the customers they despised. Nothing that came out of anyone's mouth at those times was charming or flirtatious or sweet, and the stories they told were often sufficient to turn John's stomach. Every night the work that Sherlock had once assured him "most of them enjoy" seemed more and more repellent.

He and Naoki didn't join the drinking parties, exactly, but they would stand in the doorway or lean against the bar and talk over a beer or two. “You're not gay,” Naoki said abruptly one evening. “Does it bother you that they all think you and your friend are fucking?”

John blinked at him. “Sort of? It's kind of embarrassing. Not the gay thing, just- people making assumptions.”

Naoki laughed, a little harshly. “Don't I just know it,” he said.

Really John was just too damn tired to be embarrassed any more. Tired of the clubs, tired of the people, tired of his fake tough-guy persona, tired of ramen shops and yakitori and sleeping during the day and watching Sherlock act like something out of an alternate universe.

"Japan is utterly ruined for me, you know," John said one night after they got back to the hotel. He was lying face down across his bed with his head hanging off, trying to find the motivation to get up and change into his pajamas. Sherlock was stretched out on his back on top of the covers, fingers laced together on his chest, in obedience to John's order that he "at least lie down in a bed like a normal person who goes to sleep on occasion, Jesus Christ." They'd drawn the curtains to hide the fact that the sun was already up.

"Mm?" Sherlock mumbled incoherently. His eyes had been drifting shut; John thought he might be exhausted enough to sleep a bit, which is why he made him lie down. Sneaky, but needs must.

"Once we're done, I'm never coming back here," John clarified. "I can't. To me, Japan is going to be sex clubs and desperation and indifferent constables forever, I think. Hostesses strung out on cocaine instead of finishing uni. Drunken businesswomen crooning "Part-Time Lover" in broken English and vomiting into a host's lap."

"That one was fairly memorable," Sherlock murmured. A long pause. "It's absurdly tiring to care about people, when it's so tangential to the solution of the case," he finally added. "You would do better to follow my example, John, and not bother."

"I can't," John said.

"Yes," Sherlock said, so softly that John almost didn't catch the words. "Yes, I know."


	4. Chapter 4

The next night, Nakano turned up among the curb creeps. Sherlock spotted him early in the evening, and he was still there at closing time. John had lost a bit of his vigilance over the days of tedium, so the first hint he had was Sherlock brushing up against him on the way out the door for a post-closing cigarette. "Take a cab," he murmured in John's ear. "I'll meet you."

John hesitated to leave his friend alone, but he did trust Sherlock, so he walked a couple blocks up to the main strip and took a cab back to the hotel. To his not inconsiderable relief, Sherlock met him at the elevators. "Nakano was there," Sherlock announced. "He was watching me, and I needed to be seen leaving alone."

John hissed out a breath, feeling tense all over again. "What's the next move?"

"I'll make sure he stays interested," Sherlock said. "For now, we keep on as we have been."

"And when he takes the bait?" John asked.

"He's going to take me straight to where he dumped the body," Sherlock said as John swiped them into the hotel room. His eyes were glinting with a sick kind of glee that no longer came as a shock to John.

When the door to the hotel room was closed behind them and Sherlock was headed for the bathroom, John considered for another moment before he decided what to say. "I'll be watching both of you," John said. He had studied the photograph of Nakano, would recognize him now that he had been spotted at the club. "But we need some kind of signal. I mean it, Sherlock!" he snapped as his friend turned back toward him and began to scoff. "I'd make you promise to stay safe but you'd forget."

"I don't forget," Sherlock said sulkily, and John was fairly sure he was thinking of the night in the alleyway when he promised to stay away from the cocaine.

"I didn't mean you'd break your promise," John said hastily. "But I know you. You won't do it on purpose, you'll just do something utterly mad and completely Sherlock and everything will go tits up. It might not be immediately obvious when tits get upwardly inclined, and I need to know when I should jump in and start shooting cabbies."

Sherlock huffed a soft laugh. "All right," he said. "That is true.” He smiled a real smile, an unusually warm one, at John. “You're always so sensible, John." Sherlock lapsed into thought for about a minute. "All right," he said again. "If I...would value your intervention, at any point, I'll make some gesture with my middle finger. Like so." He demonstrated, in quick succession, touching his forehead, rubbing behind his ear, and scratching his shoulder, all with his middle finger.

John grinned. "How very vulgar of you."

"Not at all," Sherlock said with great dignity, but he was smirking. "I am unlikely to make a gesture, even unconsciously, with my middle finger. Therefore any sign will be sufficiently unusual to draw your attention, and I should be able to make _some_ indication no matter what difficulty I might be in." John felt less amused at that, but Sherlock seemed to sense his feelings. "Don't fret," he said firmly. "I assure you, the precaution will prove unnecessary."

Nevertheless, John spent the next two days wracked with nervousness. Now that he was looking, he saw Nakano all the time: leaving and returning, but spending most of the evening outside on the curb. His eyes followed all the young hosts, and John was not sure if it was just paranoia that made it seem like he was paying special attention to Sherlock. During the drinking parties after work, John made excuses to hover in the doorway, or hang out in front of a club a few doors up, so he could keep an eye on his friend. Sherlock flirted with everyone, so probably only John saw the significance of the way Sherlock smiled and winked at Nakano, inviting his frankly lascivious stares.

“You do know that's Ken, right?” Naoki said to John, his face twisting into a scowl. Not just John, then.

“Yeah,” John said, swallowing his own distaste with an effort. “Of course.”

“He was banned for a reason,” Naoki said darkly. “You two better know what you're doing.”

“Yeah,” John said again, but he wondered if they actually did.

On the second night after John and Sherlock's discussion, Nakano flirted back and John had to walk inside the club to stop himself doing something drastic. On the third night, Sherlock told John in the cab toward Roppongi that he was going to step things up.

"He's on the edge," Sherlock said. "I'm going to arrange to leave early, about eleven o'clock. Have your fellow doorman waiting just next to you at about that time, so there won't be any commotion when you follow me. Try to stay as far away as you can."

John nodded, his gut tightening a little. “Be careful.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I know I’m wasting my breath, you daft bastard, but I have to _try_.”

Nakano showed up at around ten that night, and stood on the curb watching eagerly every time someone emerged from Avec Amour. Sherlock stepped past John and Naoki- they'd had a private word about Sherlock's plan before opening- at eleven exactly, and John did his best not to pay him any particular attention, or let his eyes settle on him when he walked through the crowd and deliberately brushed against Nakano. Sherlock faked a stumble, and let Nakano catch his elbow to steady him. His head bent to the shorter man, and delight lit up his face at whatever Nakano said. Then he turned and followed Nakano up the street.

Breathing quickly, John barely turned his head to say to Naoki, "I'm off, mate, take over."

“Give him one for me,” Naoki said vindictively, and if John hadn't been so focused on Sherlock just then, he would have grinned.

John followed Sherlock and Nakano through the crowd and stepped off the curb to hail a cab when it became clear Nakano was headed for a parked car. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to trust Sherlock; a nervous itch was crawling up John's spine, and all his instincts were telling him to abort this stupid plan, just run up and drag Sherlock away and to hell with the case. John stood with his hand on the open door of the cab, and watched as Sherlock climbed into the passenger side of Nakano's vehicle. Sherlock turned toward the driver's seat, occluding John's view of his face as Nakano turned the car on.

The vehicle sat for several minutes; evidently Nakano and Sherlock were just talking. And then Sherlock's hand came up, and twined into the mop of curls at the back of his head, middle finger extended. Nakano pulled off before John could even stir a step.

John flung himself into the cab. Either "follow that black Nissan" was the first phrase they taught in English classes here or the cabbie watched a lot of western action films, because he all but peeled out after Nakano's car when John gave the word. Unfortunately, it didn't work quite like it did in the films. For one thing, the traffic was too great for speeding and swerving, and for another if you valued your life there was really nothing you could do when a bus pulled directly in between you and your target. When the cabbie was able to pull back around the bus, with John scrubbing his palms against his thighs and mentally shrieking _hurryhurryhurryhurry_ , the Nissan had vanished.

"Fuck!" John said. It wasn't a word he used terribly often, but this occasion called for something a little stronger than usual. Despite the calm in his voice as he ordered the cabbie to pull over a minute, John was being overwhelmed by a sort of frenzied panic. Sherlock was in a car with a rapist and a murderer, Sherlock was in _trouble_ , maybe the man had a gun, what was he doing to him right now, could be anything, Jesus Christ where did they go? No GPS this time, if John wanted to know where Nakano’s destination lay it was all down to him.

Then he remembered Sherlock saying, "He'll take me right to where he dumped the body," the boy Brad saying woodenly, "He asked if I wanted to go for a drive, to see the ocean,” Nakano’s flat overlooking Tokyo Bay, and he knew. The wave of relief that hit him felt like a solid thing; had he been standing, he might have fallen to his knees.

John fumbled in his pockets, finding the folded photo of Nakano with his address scrawled across the back. "Here," he said urgently, shoving the photo at the cabbie. "Drive me here. Drive _fast_."

They were driving along Nakano's street when John spotted the empty car with the aid of the cab's headlights. "Stop, stop!" he ordered, and flung thousands of yen into the cabbie's lap, uncounted, so he could jump out of the car and run to the Nissan that was parked along the side of the road. The light was terrible, just the moon and a solitary lamppost maybe ten meters from the Nissan. But John could hear the waves breaking below, and when he glanced over the edge of the cliff he saw a narrow stretch of rocky beach with a strip of sand between the cliff and the waves. He listened but couldn't hear any sign that Sherlock or Nakano were nearby.

John crouched and went slowly along the edge of the cliff from the light post to about ten meters behind the car, scrabbling through the low brush that hid the edge, but he couldn't find any way of getting down. There had to be one, there had to. Perhaps Nakano had parked here and walked Sherlock to some distant beach entrance; but that made no sense, Sherlock would not have come willingly after signaling John and Nakano would want to be in a place of safety as quickly as possible. He didn't know he was being followed, there was no point in parking further away. John turned around and crawled back along the cliff on hands and knees, feeling for some change in texture or some hint of a path. He started badly when he put his hand on something cold and slick in the dirt. It was a one-pound coin.

John scrabbled forward at the point where the coin lay, brushing hands along the ground, and quickly came to the edge past which there was no ground. But the coin meant Sherlock had marked this spot. He leaned on one palm, reaching forward and down with his other hand, until at last he touched smooth stone. A step.

John scrabbled down the cliffside staircase as quickly as he dared. It was narrow, and there were no guardrails; John tried not to think about Sherlock being forced down these stairs at the end of a weapon, about how easy it would be for Nakano to just give him a push and leave him to break at the base of the cliff... _No, no, no, you idiot, if he did that the car would be gone, he's still alive, just get there._ When John reached the beach, he was at the far end from Nakano's house, perched on top of the cliff. At the place where the wall curved, John could make out a small, jagged incision in the rock: the entryway to a cave, from which a bit of light spilled. John started up the beach, remembering what a pain in the arse it was, trying to move silently and quickly on sand. It always insisted on slipping you sideways and enveloping your ankles and shushing annoyingly loudly under your feet.

As he drew closer to the cave, John began to hear voices: first indistinct murmurs, then quiet English words.

"You're not surprised," said an accented voice that must be Nakano's.

"Once we were in the car, it was clear you knew who I was. I suspect one of your police contacts described me," Sherlock said. The sweet, charming young host was utterly gone, and his voice was all bored indifference.

"I had a photograph. You are really quite striking," Nakano said. Something flattering and indescribably sleazy in his voice made John curl his fingers into fists. He was growing ever closer to the opening that leaked light onto the pale sand, and shifted sideways so that he would not be visible sneaking up to the cave.

"Don't try to flirt. I'm not remotely interested." Sherlock's voice was cold and disdainful. John, watching the cave entrance, nearly tripped over a chunk of driftwood that had fetched up near the cliff wall in some storm or high tide. It was half buried in the sand, but it looked like a good cudgel so John bent and took the few seconds needed to extract it.

"Liar. I've _watched_ you with the women at the club, the men after. I know what you whores are like." The driftwood with its convenient knot near the end felt thick and solid in John's hand. He reached the cliff and slid along the wall toward the entrance.

"You know less than half of what you think you do.”

Nakano ignored him. "I've been wondering if the killing is better, with the whore awake. I know the sex isn't." John gritted his teeth and forced himself not to ruin his stealth with haste, not when he was so close. His hands clenched so tightly that he could hear the wood beneath them creaking. "Luckily, I will be able to form a comparison now. I'll have plenty of time."

"Wrong," Sherlock said calmly.

John slid into the light and instantly took the whole scene in: a smallish cave maybe ten foot wide by twenty long. Nakano with his back to the entrance, torch in his left hand and what looked like a trench knife in his right. Sherlock was standing at the very back of the cave, bent over a little and not quite touching either the ceiling above him or the chest-high cement wall behind him. His posture was relaxed and his eyes fixed on Nakano's face; the man might not have been holding a knife at all, for all the mind Sherlock paid it. His expression didn't even flicker when John appeared, so John was forced to draw Nakano's attention himself.

"Beg pardon,” John said politely, taking two quick steps into the cave and pulling the driftwood down and back like a golfer about to tee off. Nakano turned towards him just enough for John's swing to slam into his chin and bounce the top of his head off the low ceiling with a nasty crack.

"That wasn't strictly necessary," Sherlock said, toeing the knife aside and picking up the torch. He pointed it at the cement wall. "You could have just hit him in the head without alerting him to your presence." John shrugged and dropped the driftwood. He'd just fucking had enough of the man's vile mouth. "You might have broken his jaw."

"Good," John said vindictively. He fished the phone out of his pocket and fumbled in the dark until he got the unlock code right and the display's backlight illuminated the number keys. Sherlock had the torch pinned between his shoulder and his ear, and was feeling the cement wall with both hands. "What are you doing?"

"He's buried behind here," Sherlock said. "I'm sure of it."

John's heart sank, for all that they had been assuming the worst since they talked to Aaron. "What, Nicky?"

"Yes, of course."

John punched in 9-9-9 out of habit, then realized what he was doing and swore, deleting it.

"It's one-one-two," Sherlock said without looking round. "Tell them we're at the bottom of the cliff by route 357, Kanazawa Ward, on the bay side. This close to Tokyo, there should be an operator who speaks English."

Sherlock was right, naturally, and after passing the message and assuring the operator that yes, of course they would stay until the police arrived, John hung up. He checked Nakano and found his pulse and breathing both steady, then untucked his own shirt and used the tail to pick up the knife and move it a much more comfortable distance away from Nakano's hand. John wasn't a big fan of knives, generally- a gun was safer as a threat _and_ as a way to apply lethal force- but he'd handled them before and this was a damned good one. It reminded him of a Sykes-Fairbairn; he wondered where Nakano had got it.

Sherlock finally stood up and turned away from the wall. "Nicholas Winston was buried here two days after he disappeared," he said. "Rather inexpertly and hastily, from the smell. This was probably Nakano's first actual murder, and it was probably an accident caused by an overdose of Rohypnol; though we won’t know for sure until the body is autopsied. Manslaughter."

"Unlike his planned murder of you," John said darkly. "Wait, what smell?"

Sherlock gestured at some cracks in the wall he'd been examining. "It's faint, where you are. The smell of decay is stronger the closer you get to this wall; it's emanating from the cracks. Come see."

"I'll take your word, thanks," John said. He sighed with a whoosh of breath, and leaned back against the wall. His pulse was throbbing far too quickly, and he couldn't seem to relax the tension across his shoulders. His body was tight with the tension of the pursuit and the encounter with Nakano had been too brief to sate his apparent need for action. It was probably weird and a bit wrong for him to wish the man had put up more of a fight, so that he could spend his restless energy on violence. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, obviously,” Sherlock said.

"Obviously," John said. "Right. Should have known. Getting abducted and almost murdered by a serial rapist, just another typical day for Sherlock Holmes."

"Well, I'd never let it be said that I'm uncomfortable within my own idiom." Sherlock laughed. "I could have fought him for the knife, you know, once he stopped the car. I would have won."

"Yeah, I expect you would have," John said. "But you knew he was taking you to Nicky's body, so you held off." Sherlock stared at him in surprise, and that made John laugh, too. "I told you, didn't I? _I know you._ " He grinned at his friend. "Utterly mad. Tits up. Knowing when to jump in. I'm pretty damn comfortable in _my_ idiom, too. Even though you probably could have done without me, there not being any fascinating suicide challenges this time 'round.”

“Not at all, John,” Sherlock said quietly. “This time, I _did_ know you would turn up. It makes a considerable difference.”

John could feel the tips of his ears turning red at the unexpected, awkward compliment. “Maybe we should wait outside. So the police will see us when they get here.”

“All right,” Sherlock said. “Let’s.”

It was two more days and one very depressing phone conversation with Sir Ellery later that John and Sherlock were permitted to check out of their hotel and take a cab to the airport.

John napped for the early hours of the flight, read the in-flight magazine, finished the half-completed crossword in the back, and drafted most of a letter to Naoki that he couldn't send until Sherlock gave him his laptop back. Finally, when he could delay no longer, he hauled out the English-language newspaper he'd purchased at the airport before they left. Two headlines dueled for pride of place on the front page: "Kenji Nakano charged with serial rape" across from "Nakano's lawyer: sex partners were paid prostitutes."

John already knew what the first article said, so he skipped directly to the second. After only a few minutes' reading, his face twisted involuntarily into a snarl. "That son of a bitch," he ground out. "He made a statement listing the names of all the men he's charged with attacking. And he says they were all prostitutes that accepted money to have sex with him."

"Not surprising," Sherlock said lazily, looking up from the laptop resting on the tray in front of him. The four tablets of Benadryl John had let him take at the start of the flight hadn't put him to sleep- probably a lasting result of his years of stimulant abuse- but they _had_ turned him almost shockingly mellow. "I'll bet he doesn't mention his home video library."

"Of course not," John said, slapping the newspaper down angrily. "How the hell is he allowed to get away with this? No one put his victims' names in print before, but now that they're out the press will eat them alive."

"It's already started," Sherlock said, and spun the laptop so John could see the screen. It was the newest edition of the _Sun_ , with the blaring headline "Ministry official's son in Asian rent boy shocker!"

"Oh, Christ," John groaned. "Poor Sir Ellery."

"Indeed," Sherlock said, and flicked the laptop straight again. "No doubt this is why Mycroft urged me not to become involved. He would have chosen to resolve the matter without involving the police or the press."

"I'm starting to see the value of discretion," John said bitterly.

"Sir Ellery at least knows the fate of his son, which is more than Mycroft would have given him," Sherlock said. "And with the evidence in that cave and the tapes from Nakano's house, the culprit will remain in prison." He raised an eyebrow. "Am I meant to feel remorse for that?"

John shrugged and Sherlock went back to his typing. John sat brooding for the space of ten or twenty minutes, sinking into the haze of the sadness and frustration roused by the entirely unsatisfactory conclusion of their hunt for Nicholas Winston. He didn't realize that he had sighed aloud until Sherlock asked, "What is it?"

"This whole thing feels like a waste," said John. "We didn't save Nicky. We caught Nakano, but all it's done is create a hell for the half-dozen kids brave enough to come forward about what he did to them. And-" John swallowed hard. "Those damn clubs. All those young men and women being taken advantage of, lured in, trapped. It's not going to stop."

"No," Sherlock said. "It certainly isn't."

John slammed his tightly-clenched fist down on the arm of his seat, and Sherlock glanced over at him. "What does it mean?" John bit out. "Things were awful in Afghanistan, but you expect that in a war zone. I thought it would be better in the civilian world. But it's just the same: all the misery and violence and fear."

"It doesn't have to _mean_ anything, of itself," Sherlock said in a strangely serious tone. "But it must lead to some outcome, some...purpose." He frowned, as if not liking the inexactness of his words. "It’s unthinkable that it all be ruled by mere chance."

John blinked. "That sounds almost religious. Do you believe in God, then?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I don't believe in luck, or coincidences," he said evasively. "At any rate, 'What is it all for' is a question the human race has been trying to answer for millennia, and we are still no closer to an answer."

"Well, you could take a crack at it," John said, smiling crookedly. "You _are_ the detective."

"I'm more a pragmatist than an existentialist," Sherlock said. He turned back to his laptop. "All the same, I'll be sure to let you know if any leads turn up."

If Sherlock was joking, neither his face nor his voice showed any sign of it.


	5. Afterword

This story was based on a [prompt on the kinkmeme](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/6375.html?thread=29723111#t29723111), asking for Sherlock working at a Japanese host club. Perhaps unfortunately for the prompter, I had recently finished reading [Tokyo Vice](http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Vice-American-Reporter-Vintage/dp/0307475298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298082497&sr=8-1), a memoir by Jake Adelstein, a westerner who worked for a number of years as a crime beat reporter for a Japanese newspaper. The book covers Mr. Adelstein's experiences reporting on yakuza, the sex trade in Japan, human trafficking, and the murder of a young British woman named Lucie Blackman by a sick fuck named Joji Obara.

Joji Obara liked to pick up foreign hostesses, drug them, and rape them while they were unconscious. He would pay them off to buy their silence. He videotaped the assaults and police found hundreds of these tapes when they eventually raided his home. Partially due to the vulnerability of the victims (most of whom were working illegally on tourist visas) and the unwillingness of police to take reports of sexual assault on hostesses seriously, Obara did this to hundreds of victims over the course of a decade before he was investigated properly. When charged, Obara sneered at his victims by naming them to the press and pulling the "hookers can't be raped" card. He is truly a worthless piece of shit.

When I wrote this story, I changed the gender of the victims for two reasons, both fairly selfish. First, it worked better for the story. And second, the last lengthy story I wrote featured a killer who targeted exclusively women. I wanted to write this, but I frankly needed a break from the misogyny murder theme (even though in reality, Obara was absolutely motivated by misogyny).

I meant no disrespect to Lucie Blackman, her family, to Obara's other victims, or to Jake Adelstein. I hope my readers do not see any. When I read Adelstein's book, it seemed to me to be the work of a man trying to make the terrible things he had seen serve a purpose. I work with crime and crime victims myself, and I can understand the need to bear witness, and the worry that just speaking truth may not be enough to combat the evil in the world.

Joji Obara could never be conclusively linked to Lucie Blackman's death. He was, however, convicted of abducting her and dismembering her body, as well as raping nine other women and murdering one of them, Carlita Ridgway. In December of 2010, Japan's highest court upheld Obara's conviction and life sentence. He remains in prison.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Meaning Of It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/378967) by [Mazarin221b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin221b/pseuds/Mazarin221b)




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